By DOLPH HONICKER
It was a lesson I should have learned when still wet behind the ears: never watch sausage being made or Congress at work.
But there I was viewing CSPAN as Democratic congresspersons tried vainly to pass a resolution to up the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour -- a pittance that hadn’t been changed in a decade -- as one Republican speaker after another rose to defend our troops, our flag and our record deficits. No, scratch that last item.
Having a weak stomach, I switched to the Discovery Channel. There I saw the No. 1 concern of my Republican friends. The channel was running a segment on yachts.
One of my favorite yachts was built for speed at 140 feet long and 26 feet wide. The master bedroom with its king-sized bed stretched from port to starboard. On a trial run, its owner got it up to 69 knots. That’s 74 miles an hour. Imagine the wake!
This fits the GOP axiom that a rising tide lifts all yachts. Leaky rowboats fend for themselves.
Was that yacht powered by 2,000 horsepower or 20,000 horsepower engines? I don’t recall. I just remember the owner smiling into the camera and saying, “When you open this up to maximum speed, it could burn up your credit card.”
Yeah.
Have no fear, Mr. Yacht Owner, President George W. Bush’s tax cuts that turn millionaires into multimillionaires will bail you out at the pump, and his pie-in-the-sky hydrogen program, run by nuclear power plants, will have your boat running on water vapors.
The speedy yacht sleeps ten plus its crew with a mere $30 million price sticker. And, when hurricane season approaches, you can avoid dings in the hull and bent windshield wipers by having it transported on specially built tankers to the Mediterranean off Monaco or Nice where the young maidens go topless on the pebble beaches.
Transportation cost? A shade over $200,000 one way. But, when you own a $30 million yacht, what’s a few hundred thou? Play your cards right and Bush-Cheney will reimburse you.
The yacht that really caught my eye was a large steamer built in 1921by the founder of Dodge auto works (I think his name was Dodge) which burned in 1926 and was refurbished a year or so later. Its original $2 million cost would be the equivalent of $100 million today -- chicken feed for the current crop of Bushonaires.
Teakwood furnishings, Jacuzzies and the all comforts of home (yours, not mine) abound in this floating luxury hotel.
But I offer this small bit of advice to neophyte yachtsmen sailing off to Nice. My wife and I were there in 1991. I was armed with a primitive video cam that weighed about 20 pounds. I zoomed in on the nubile beach scenery, swinging my neck from left to right. The next day in Avignon I woke up with a stiff neck that stayed that way for a month.
Note: Pebbles on the Nice beach hurt bare feet. This is not Florida. Wear sandals.
Pythian Press.
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